


To the Feelings of

by RoseFangedLion



Series: Comparing Starlight [1]
Category: K-pop, VIXX
Genre: Budding Relationship, College AU, Comparing Starlight, Domestic, Long-Term Relationship(s), M/M, Pointless fluff, Romance, Scout Camp, phone call fluff?, sort of domestic?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-30
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-05-04 02:11:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5316368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseFangedLion/pseuds/RoseFangedLion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taekwoon is so ready for summer to end and his boyfriend to come home from Scout camp. Two months is far too long to survive on only a short Saturday phone call.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Other End of the Line

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheNevemore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNevemore/gifts).



It was the summer of their junior year of college. The air was was sticky and hot, like summers always were, but Taekwoon found the bed uncomfortably cold and altogether too big as he waited for his Saturday night phone call. It had been six weeks since Hakyeon had left for camp. Boy Scout camp, more specifically. Down a rocky, terrifying ten mile road at the very edge of a tiny town called Warner Springs just passed Anza in the high desert. It was hours away from Los Angeles but it felt like days. It felt like the other side of the freaking country, perhaps even the other side of the world. He'd been having more conversations with his best friend Wonsik who was still back in Seoul than he had been with Hakyeon.

No cell service, barely functioning internet and the only way to call out was a voice delayed satellite phone. It felt like a death sentence. So every Saturday Taekwoon waited up with his own phone held tightly to his chest. When he got home from work at the music store down the street from their tiny studio apartment he was exceptionally tired, but the hum of anticipation kept his eyes open enough to stare at the old wooden beams in the ceiling. Minutes ticked away in agony and the next thing he knew he was being startled awake but the obnoxious blare of his buzzing cellphone.

Disoriented and barely lucid he managed to answer awkwardly with a rough gravely voice in Korean rather than english. Mid greeting he realized his mistake but it was too late to stop by then. At worst he would get a confused 'what?' on the other end.

Instead he got the echo of his own voice and a delayed chuckle followed by, “Did I wake you up baby?” rattling though the fuzz in a voice of sugar sweet chocolate that melted his heart out of his chest. He missed that voice with every inch of his soul, ached for it like nothing he had ever ached for in all of his life. He missed it so much he could feel warm skin between his fingertips, and the memory spicy floral cologne reached out for him in the dark.

“Hakyeon-ah?” He asked, sitting up on the bed.'

There was a chime of laughter that echoed through the line, “Sweet lion boy,” he cooed, and paused again like he had to, waiting for the satellite to catch up, “Can't remember your english at this hour?

Taekwoon had never been so glad for the delay in the phone because it took him a minute to remember how to say what he wanted to say because there weren't words for it. There weren't enough words to express 'I miss you' or 'The bed is so empty without you' or 'please come home, I can't take this anymore.' The white noise drowned out the hitch in his words when he offered up “It's good to hear your voice Hakyeon,” and then he paused, waiting for the signal to catch up “I miss you.”

“I miss you too Taekwoonie,” he said, “Only one more week right?”

The black haired music major took a moment to look at the neon numbers on the microwave across the room, it was 1:30am. “Why are you calling so late?” he asked, stretching his back as he stood.

“Ah, that,” Hakyeon laughed, “I fell asleep after clean up today. I just woke up and took a shower before I came here to use the phone. I was just going to leave a message.”

“Mm,” Taekwoon yawned.

“Do you want to go back to bed sweetheart?” Hakyeon inquired, “You sound tired.”

They tried to talk over each other briefly as a mash of unintelligible words met some where in space, crashing together in a resounding rattle. They both paused for the signal to catch up, “At least there's no one waiting for the phone this time,” Hakyeon continued.

“Yeah,” Taekwoon offered with a deep sigh of contentment and relief.

Suddenly they breached the part of the conversation that had become routine, even if it was hours later than usual. That part where the red head on the other end of the world talked about his week.

Taekwoon listened, more to the rich sound of his excited lover's voice than to the words, but he caught on as much as he could. The words felt garbled to his sleepy brain. English was fuzzy, and hard to grab on to in moments like this. Hakyeon had always been speaking it all summer, so it was faster than before, and some of his speech patterns had changes just a bit.

“Hakyeon-ah,” he interjected as he wondered around changing from jeans that were digging uncomfortably into his skin to loose sweatpants.

“Yes dear?” The other asked automatically.

“Your English,” he grumbled, “It's too fast,” suddenly he felt shy, running his hands over the buttons of his work shirt as he walked to the closet, “Could you...maybe do it in Korean.” He traded his stiff button up to one of Hakyeon's thin, baggy black sleep shirts. It still smelled like him, somehow that made it comfortably warm.

The voice on the other end of the line paused for a moment, “Of course,” the redhead offered, and his voice was smiling wide before his breath caught even over the white noise of the bad connection. “Of course I can tell you about my week in Korean.”

“Are you crying?” Taekwoon asked.

“No,” the other laughed, “I am definitely not.” And then he went on about his week, in the comfortable familiarity of their mother tongue. Taekwoon swore he could taste warm lips, salty and sweet against his and his heart raced. Butterflies raced through his stomach as he threw himself back down on the mattress, on Hakyeon's side of the bed. The comfort of home, that he hadn't felt in a month and a half settled in around him. All of his anxieties and his daily worries just melted away. His muscles loosened and the bed, for the first time in forever, felt inviting.

“Taekwoon-ah, are you asleep?” Hakyeon's painfully sweet voice lulled him from his haze sometime around three in the morning, “Should I go?”

“No!” he jumped, jolted by the idea of losing the comfortable voice on the phone, “I'm awake, please don't go.”

“Shhh,” Hakyeon hushed, “Baby, its okay, plug your phone in. Ill talk you to sleep this time.”

An hour later, Hakyeon, with heavy eyes, in a cramped office in the middle of the desert, said “Good night sweet lion boy,” to the gentle breathing on the other end of the phone and prayed for this last week to go quickly because he missed home so badly.


	2. The Other End of the World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Taekwoon finally gets to go pick his beloved boyfriend up from camp.

The drive is silent agony, with twitch fingers, and much lonelier than he had anticipated. Without Hakyeon's chatter to fill the void the car feels inescapably empty, so Taekwoon listens to the radio until the radio no longer gets a signal. That's somewhere just outside of Temecula with two more hours of driving to go down winding back roads and two lane highways in the middle of nowhere. He distracts himself by putting in a CD that WonSik had sent him. It has a bunch of the new idol groups on it; and he doesn't miss the two original songs his best friend managed to throw in there either. Rap wasn't usually his genre but the beat is nice.

Anticipation doesn't really hit him until he makes it to the dreaded ten mile road. He has to hum and mumble to himself as he endures the stress of rocks and the high cliff to his right. The car moves underneath him like an old horse jostling its arthritic hips to the sway of the rain washout in the dirt road. Grooves and ravines serve as speed bumps every few feet and the progress is nauseating. It takes an entire hour to make it down through there in his beat up maroon Honda civic. When he passes through the last gate a nice older man with a broad smile waves at him and points him down a crunchy gravel road he vaguely remembers leading to a dining hall.

Hakyeon had warned him on the phone last night, for the whole three minutes they had been able to speak, that pick up would be messy and disorganized because everyone leaves at different times but there are at least traffic cones and people guiding the cars that appear every so often. His nerves are on fire when he pulls into a make shift parking area by the stripped down box of a building that served as the 'business office,' It's dirty and settled on a lopsided concrete slab, looking so out of place in dry forest all around.

The gravel crunches beneath his feet, he can feel spines of sharp rock bending the souls of his shoes and the air smells like dust, campfire and chlorine. He spots Hakyeon a little ways away on a small grass patch with a row of sun weathered picnic tables. Being anxious made him breathless, or maybe being breathless was making him anxious as he leaned against the car and folded his arms across his chest.

The dark auburn of his lover's hair is faded to a burnt orange brown that blends almost with the roots that are grown out that dark chocolate that he adores but its Hakyeon's skin that catches the younger man's eyes in that moment. His skin that looks like the sun has melted into every one of his pores. He's radiant, beautiful, with dark skin that looks so warm and inviting. It's a delicious golden tan, the kind that brings out the chestnut color of his smiling eyes and Taekwoon wants to run his hands all over it, soak into it like the sun has and never let go again.

He's smiling as he speaks with a group of girls. The one to his left, a pretty blonde with her dark green venture crew shirt on taps Hakyeon's shoulder and says, “Hey N, isn't that your room mate?” pointing to Taekwoon where he's still leaned up against the car they co-own.

The older boy's gaze shifts and the black haired music major has to put a hand over his lips to keep his heart from coming out his mouth and splattering all over the gravel on the ground. A smile breaks across his mouth where his frown usually settles. It spreads broad across his face, aches almost as much as his soul does. The corners of his eyes curve up and his cheeks push at his nose and this feeling is so unfamiliar. Anxiety mixed with this strange sensation of overflowing love, bursting out of his chest.

“No,” Hakyeon says as a smile brighter than the hot, cloudless dessert blooms across his pink lips. It's so wide his perfectly white teeth show and his sparkling eyes nearly disappear.

“Really?” The girl asks rather dumbly. “Are you sure.”

“Nope, I'm sure,” he says again, “That is definitely not my room mate,” he offers, shaking his head with a laugh that rings out like a church bell on Sunday morning, screaming salvation and welcome home.

Everyone seems to have been drawn in to this one conversation, sucked in by the gravity that Hakyeon and Taekwoon have always had between them. The younger man can feel eyes on him, and it makes his blood hot, he knows his cheeks are three shades of red and his ears are burning. He fights off the desire to double over in embarrassment only because his eyes have locked with the kind red-brown of his soulmates and there's no way he can turn away now. He's captivated.

“But...” one of the younger girls on the other side of him stutters but doesn't finish her thought, instead switching to another one. “But you said your room mate was picking you up, and that guy looks just like him.”

It only occurs to Taekwoon in that moment, just seconds before the words come tumbling out of Hakyeon's mouth in uncharacteristically accented english that its okay for his marginally older lover to admit to being gay without being kicked out of scouting now.

“Well, I had to say that last week,” he shakes his head one last time, unfolding his arms almost dramatically, “but that's definitely not my room mate, that's Taekwoon... Leo? my boyfriend...well he is also my room mate, but mostly he's my boyfriend.” Now, instead of just burning bright red his cheeks are aching from that smile he's been holding. He can feel his soul reaching out for its other half, trying to escape out the toothy grin he tries so hard to hide behind his hand.

Taekwoon is pretty sure that he has died and gone to heaven as Hakyeon excuses himself from conversation he's in. With wonderfully tan hands he waves off a few comments and straightens his back against his childhood social conventions. The younger man doesn't miss how he dips his head and shoulders just a little bit lower than a nod though. Some habits are hard to break.

They hadn't been able to kiss goodbye when Taekwoon had left seven weeks ago. They had left it at the world's most dissatisfying hug, but now, now it didn't have to be like that so his smile grew wider as his boyfriend approached and it took two hands to cover his grin now. Out of habit he licked his teeth and bit his lip as he fidgeted, digging his heels into the rocks.

Someone in the background said something along the lines of “That's freaking adorable,” but he could barely hear anything over the rush of his own blood in his ears and the hum of climaxing anticipation as his soul spilled out through the cracks between his teeth and spread out around him like invisible wings in the mid-day sun.

With a nervous jitter Hakyeon uses just the palms of his hands to slick his hair back, pushing at his ears with as he walks across the uneven rocks. The older boy isn't wearing insoles, in fact he's wearing flat converse, which is completely unusual but Taekwoon guesses that shoe lifts got tiring after awhile. This fact was only important because the younger man often forgets how much taller he is than his lover. The difference between five foot nine and six foot one is enough to match their eyes while he was still leaning back and suddenly they were face to face, for the first time in what felt like eons.

There was no grand, slow motion running, or great slamming together of bodies in haste but there was a gentle colliding of spirits as fingers danced across his broad shoulders for just a fraction of a second before strong, skinny, dancers arms wrapped around him. Faded hair tickled his soft cheeks and he didn't even have the time to stand up. His own arms, strong in different ways found themselves around Hakyeon's thin waist, curved up the gentle slope of his back, fingers splayed out, touching as much as he could. His skin, his body, his whole was thirsty and wanting. Every inch of him had the desire to just melt into Hakyeon like heated wax molded to wood. Their chests pressed together and he lowers his head, pressing his nose into the nape of Hakyeon's wonderfully elegant neck. Deep breaths drag sighs of relief like blessings of long needed comfort through two sets of lips that long to touch.  
The smell that greets him is liquid sunlight mashed with the familiarity of spicy masculinity and floral lavender. Its the same as always but somehow different, warmer, if smell could have a color it would deep amber and sound like the ocean crashing on the shore. It is everything. This is everything.so he buries his face further.Words form, and fall, and fail to sound like what they mean, because there are no translations for feelings like 'I think I might have accidentally fallen more in love with you than I originally intended to,' or, 'I didn't know I missed you this much.'

He's pretty sure he's said “I love you” in eight languages, at least four of which he doesn't actually speak by the time Hakyeon puts a hand in his long black hair and pulls him in closer to soothe his irrational, flaring anxieties.

Suddenly tears prick at the corners of the younger man's eyes and start to fall, with his face pressed as uncomfortably close as he can manage to get it they soak into the collar of his lover's dark green Venture Scouting uniform. Something that sounds like “Shhh, baby, don't cry,” reaches his ears but he can't stop now. It's weird. The ache of longing releases and his arms tighten around that tiny waist. Taekwoon wants to stay there forever and his nerves fire off in protest as his dear sweet boyfriend's grip loosens. Something inside him comes to the irrational conclusion that if he lets go this will all have been a dream so he tries desperately not to let got. Arms unwind, creeping slowly from shoulders to neck, dancing around on the neck band of his blue shirt. The dancer is in no way put off balance by the restriction of his movement, he just arches his back beautifully and runs a hand through long black hair.  
“You grew your hair out,” Hakyeon's rich voice floats almost disembodied through the younger man's ears.

He blushes just a little bit more as he explains that he was afraid to go to the salon without Hakyeon because he's not as confident in his english without the older man to fall back on. Despite having lived in California for three years, english still scares him. Taekwoon chooses, in his embarrassment not to look his lover in the eyes until an untrimmed nail claws at the soft underside of his chin, pressuring it upwards.

“I like it,” Hakyeon admits with a dark red painting his cheeks as he brushes his hand through thick wavy black strands again. Warm fingers with long nails scrape across the tender skin of Taekwoon's scalp and tuck those long hairs behind his ears, he leans into it just a little “But if you want it cut we can go tomorrow okay?”

“Everyone is watching us,” Taekwoon notices in a quiet whisper and Hakyeon chuckles as the familiar callouses of his long fingers chase away tears.  
Hakyeon shrugs and digs his fingers into Taekwoon's hair as he leans forward to fill the sparse void between them. Finally, their lips press together. There are fireworks behind the younger man's eyes as he closes them. This kiss is desperate but it isn't a show, it doesn't last for ten minutes, or involve sloppy tongues chasing after lust. It's slow, and tender. It swallows his worries, his fears, his doubts and draws that last little piece of his soul out as it deepens just enough to leave him wanting more. It manages to communicate all of the things he can't find words for. When they break apart he isn't sure what language he's speaking but he does say, “I think I might've fallen in love with you a little more than I originally intended to.”

An eye smile curves back into Hakyeon's already radiant features and he leans forward, lifting one of his hands to plant a sloppy wet kiss on his boyfriend's blush stained cheek. The feeling of soft lips lingers and sends a chill down the younger man's spine. The beautifully tan hand that is still holding onto Taekwoon's face shakes just enough for him to notice and the dancer's balance falters. His incredible core strength doesn't fail him, but the slippery rocks beneath his worn out shoes can't take the pressure he's putting on them.

The older man rolls with laughter, squeezing his eyes shut as his face collides with deliciously well defined collar bone. He's hoisted to his feet by strong arms that are pressed hard into his back, Taekwoon makes a point of finally standing all of the way up, pulling Hakyeon with him and putting the gorgeous dancer back on his own two feet. “I missed you Taekwoon, and, I love you too,” he offers as he takes a step back, “And I'm glad I can say that in front of my friends. Let's load up, sign out, and go home.”

Taekwoon nods lacing his fingers with those of an offered hand, running his thumb across a rough palm as he uses his free hand to wipe the spit off his cheek. He's pretty sure that he'll be smiling for the next week, even though his face already hurts.

“Come on,” Hakyeon urges, tugging gently, “I want you to meet my friends Taekwoonie.”

**Author's Note:**

> I spent three summers working at a scout camp, I loved it so hardcore but it was two summers of no technology, I was always baffled by the people that maintained relationships with just ten minute phone calls once a week and the occasional email. 
> 
> Shout out to Schope Scout Reservation at Lost Valley.


End file.
